Finally got my hands on DAO Awakening … happened to come across a Game Stop in one of the local malls, remembered I had a gift voucher from 2009 in my bag, dropped by, saw the DAO Ultimate Edition for far less money than the add-on and bought it. Late Birthday present, so to say.
My first thought after installing Awakening was that combat hadn't felt as clunky when I had played vanilla DA but then I remembered that I had played DA2 in between it and its add-on. . Well, there are things you do get used to, fast. But now that I'm a few hours into the game I got used to the clunky DAO combat again.
I made a new Warden for it, by the way. Just felt like it.